Ukraine: A New Cold War?!
Local Editor
Ukraine mobilized for war Sunday as US officials announced that Russian forces completely controlled the Crimean peninsula in one of the biggest confrontation between Moscow and the West since the Cold War.
Russian President Vladimir Putin secured permission from his Parliament Saturday to use military force to protect Russian citizens in Ukraine and told US President Barack Obama he had the right to defend Russian interests and nationals, spurning Western pleas not to intervene.
"This is not a threat: This is actually the declaration of war to my country," Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk said. Yatsenuik heads a pro-Western government that took power when the country' president, Viktor Yanukovich, was ousted last week.
According to agencies, US Secretary of State John Kerry called on Putin to pull back from "an incredible act of aggression."
Kerry will head to Kiev Tuesday to stress US political and economic support for the new government, a senior US administration official said, adding that Russian forces were "now in complete operational control of the Crimean peninsula."
With Russian forces in control of majority ethnic Russian Crimea, the focus is shifting to eastern swaths of Ukraine, where most ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian as a native language.
Those areas saw more demonstrations Sunday after violent protests Saturday, and for a second day pro-Moscow activists hoisted flags at government buildings and called for Russia to defend them.
Russia has staged war games with 150,000 troops along the land border, but so far they have not crossed.
Ukraine's security council ordered the general staff to immediately put all armed forces on highest alert. However, Kiev's small and under-equipped military is seen as no match for Russia's superpower might.
The United States is not considering military options to deal with the crisis, a senior official told reporters, but is focused on economic, diplomatic and political measures to get Russia to reverse its intervention.
After an emergency meeting, NATO allies urged the deployment of observers to defuse tension.
"We urge both parties to immediately seek a peaceful resolution through dialogue, through the dispatch of international observers under the auspices of the United Nations Security Council or the OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe]," the 28-member Atlantic Alliance said in a statement after almost eight hours of talks.
Ukraine is not a NATO member, meaning the US and Europe are not obligated to come to its defense.
In a phone conversation late Sunday, Putin accepted a proposal by German Chancellor Angela Merkel to establish a "fact-finding mission," possibly under the leadership of the OSCE, to facilitate political dialogue, a spokesperson for the German government said.
Putin has defied calls to pull back his troops, insisting that Russia has a right to protect its interests and those of Russian-speakers in Crimea and elsewhere in Ukraine.
He told Merkel that Russian citizens and Russian-speakers in Ukraine faced an "unflagging" threat from ultranationalists, and that the measures Moscow has taken were completely fitting given the "extraordinary situation," the Kremlin said.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Facebook that Ukraine's new leaders had seized power illegally and predicted their rule would end with "a new revolution" and new bloodshed.
The speaker of Crimea's legislature, Vladimir Konstantinov, was quoted as saying local authorities do not recognize the new government in Kiev. He said a planned referendum on March 30 would ask voters about the region's future status.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
